What are you laughing at?

Scientists are trying to figure out what makes something funny. We compare notes with comedians ⁠Atsuko Okatsuka⁠, ⁠Josh Johnson⁠, ⁠Dulcé Sloan⁠, and ⁠Chris Fleming⁠ (Originally published in 2023) Guests: ⁠Allie Volpe⁠, Vox correspondent; ⁠Peter McGraw⁠, professor at University of Colorado Boulder; ⁠Caleb Warren⁠, professor at the University of Arizona For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:49Speaker 01

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• 1:36Speaker 02

  I'm so not fun. I'm a Virgo, so please let me destroy everything you love and make it analytical.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Ali Volpe is a Vox correspondent. And back in 2023, she spoke to our reporter Manning Nguyen about her quest to destroy comedy.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  I'm taking this thing that is somewhat sexy and mysterious. You know, like, everybody wants to date somebody funny or be around funny people.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Ali loves comedy, but she wanted to understand how it works. Can it be analyzed scientifically? Is there anyone who actually studies humor?

• 2:10Speaker 05

  We've been able to make a career out of it. It's probably the most surprising thing.

• 2:14Speaker 04

  So Ali found Peter McGraw. He's a behavioral economist at the University of Colorado, where he also runs the Humor Research Lab. It's where they get serious about being funny.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  So if this makes the podcast, people are gonna be listening and be like, this is not funny at all.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  The Humor Lab started with a surprising discovery. Over a decade ago, Peter was studying something called moral violations.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Which are victimless, yet offensive actions. An example of such victimless, yet offensive action is eating one's dead pet. The pet is already dead and there's no victims here. That would be considered a moral violation. Like, it's weird, but it doesn't hurt anybody.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  Moral violations are things that are supposed to provoke anger or disgust, ewes and yucks. But when Peter gave lectures about them, people would keep bursting out laughing, and he didn't know why.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  He couldn't stop thinking about it. He was just like, this is a great question. Why are we laughing at this?

• 3:17Speaker 04

  So Peter teamed up with a grad student named Caleb.

• 3:20Speaker 06

  I was excited about it right away when we thought it was just a project on moral violations.

• 3:25Speaker 05

  I mean, the moral violation studies are just winners. I mean--

• 3:30Speaker 06

  Those are fun.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  And they started trying to figure out what makes moral violations funny. But in the process, their question got way, way bigger. I'm Manning Nguyen, and this week on Unexplainable, can science help us figure out what makes something funny?

• 4:02Speaker 04

  When Ali started down this rabbit hole, she came across a few old ideas, more from philosophy than science.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  There were three main theories of humor about why we find things funny. The superiority theory, the relief theory, and incongruity theory.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Superiority theory goes all the way back to Aristotle and Plato. The idea is that we find something funny when we feel superior to someone else. Like laughing at a person who trips and falls riding an escalator. You think, I wouldn't have tripped.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  On the other hand, relief theory was a favorite of Freud's. The idea is that we laugh to release tension or nervous energy, like when you can't help but giggle in an uncomfortable situation.

• 4:49Speaker 07

  I'm not uncomfortable. I just keep thinking of funny things.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  The last theory Ali found was incongruity theory. And here we've got some famous philosophers like Kant and Kierkegaard.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  So incongruity theory is when something betrays our expectations. Like, we think a joke is going one way, but then the punchline sort of changes it.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Ali thought that all of these theories were interesting, but none of them were perfect.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Each one doesn't explain the whole humor experience.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Caleb and Peter, the researchers from the Humor Lab, they weren't satisfied with these explanations either. Take incongruity theory. The idea that surprise or subverting expectations alone is enough to make something funny.

• 5:32Speaker 06

  I remember one of the reasons we started doing this is because this is such a dumb theory of humor.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  It's such a lazy theory.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  If I run you over with my car, you're gonna be surprised. You're not gonna be laughing. The 10th time I saw the Big Lebowski, I knew exactly what was coming, but I was laughing. So you can be amused without surprise, and you can be surprised without being amused. Yet this is what people were saying was the reason people are laughing.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Kant and Kierkegaard weren't giving them the answers. So Peter and Caleb thought, maybe we could come up with something better.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  The problem with humor research in general is that it has its roots in philosophy. And so there's this tendency to make arguments using examples and thought experiments.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  So they tried to do some real experiments.

• 6:23Speaker 05

  Caleb created my favorite study that we ever ran.

• 6:26Speaker 06

  The jelly bean or the--

• 6:27Speaker 05

  The Skittles one. The Skittles study, yes.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  The Skittles study goes like this. Participants go into a room to fill out a survey. There's a table and a bowl of Skittles, and there's an actor posing as a research assistant. And the goal of the study is to figure out the funniest way the actor can offer the bowl of Skittles. They ran this test in lots of different ways, but in the first condition--

• 6:52Speaker 06

  The actor will say, I'm sorry to interrupt you. In a couple of seconds, I'm supposed to offer you these Skittles. Would you like these Skittles?

• 7:01Speaker 04

  This isn't that funny.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  But then, things get a little weird. In another group, the actor just flings the Skittles at them.

• 7:11Speaker 06

  Out of nowhere, they launch the bowl of Skittles and only afterwards say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was told to launch the bowl of Skittles.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  This is surprising, but not that funny. It's a little messed up. In the last group, though, the actor gives them some warning before it happens.

• 7:28Speaker 06

  They say, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but in a few seconds, I need to throw this bowl of Skittles at you. Then they launch the bowl of Skittles on the participant.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  It's pretty funny.

• 7:39Speaker 06

  There was more laughter, certainly, in both of the throwing conditions. But there was a lot more laughter when the person was told the Skittles were gonna be thrown at them first.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Under incongruity theory, people should be more likely to laugh if there's surprise. But that's not the case here. People are more likely to laugh when it's not a surprise, when they're warned before it happens.

• 7:59Speaker 06

  That's because, once you hear that and the Skittles get thrown at them, you know it's part of the study.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  You're prepared.

• 8:05Speaker 06

  You're prepared. The point of this was to show that it's not about surprise, and surprise, in some cases, actually hurts.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  So if it's not surprise that's making people laugh when Skittles are being thrown at them, what is it? This is where Peter and Caleb's own theory comes in, what they call the benign violation theory.

• 8:30Speaker 05

  People experience humor, they laugh when something is wrong yet okay. Something is threatening yet safe.

• 8:38Speaker 06

  Even though it's a threat, it's not a real threat, or it's not a problem for me, or it's not a big deal. And yeah, you need to have both benign and violation at the same time.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  It's why we laugh when a friend makes fun of us, when it doesn't actually feel mean and we feel secure about the relationship, or why we laugh when someone farts in public. And with the Skittles study, people laugh the most when they get a heads up that Skittles are gonna be thrown at them.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  It makes it more benign. Whereas when the Skittles are thrown at you out of nowhere, you're like, what is going on? Why is this person being such a jerk? It's when you're warned, the people are laughing more, because that makes it seem more benign.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  And this theory starts to make more sense when you look at how humor and laughter may have evolved in the first place.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  There's pretty good evidence that laughter is a form of communication. It happens far more with other species and humans in the presence of others, and it predates language. So then the question becomes, well, what does it communicate? If it's before language, it must communicate something really important.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Some animals make specific sounds when they play, like rats make these ultrasonic squeals when they're being tickled, and even dogs have specific barks when they're play fighting. But other than primates, animals don't really laugh like we do. Our laughter, it might have evolved from some of these sounds animals make during play, a sign that the situation was safe.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  Social norms, language, logic, all these things that humans created, identity. Once we have those things as humans, now there are different ways we can be threatened. And if you can be threatened, something can also signal, well, not a big deal.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  So according to Peter and Caleb's benign violation theory, humor is a tool for us to learn social norms and culture. It's a way to communicate the difference between a perceived threat and a real one. Laughter tells us, oh, this thing, it's not really gonna hurt us.

• 10:36Speaker 06

  Learning the social world is really difficult. And one of the values of humor is it gives us clues as to what scene is wrong, what scene is okay, sometimes both at the same time.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  And these social norms are subjective. They change between cultures.

• 10:52Speaker 06

  No, your audience know their culture, because you need to know both what's going to threaten them, but also what they're gonna be okay with.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Humor can teach you how to be a person and how to move about the world.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Unfortunately for Ali, learning about what makes things funny from the scientists, it hasn't made her funnier.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely not. No.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  When it comes to being funny, science might only take us so far. Peter and Caleb's theory can tell us what laughter might mean, what it might communicate. It can tell us about what things in the world we think are benign or won't hurt us. But their theory isn't perfect. An abstract theory doesn't give us the complete picture of humor either.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  The thing that I kept coming back to throughout the whole reporting process is that whole analysis of it sort of takes the magic out of it. And like, a lot of stand-ups, they workshop their material a lot in front of audiences to see what they laugh at. And I think that, to me, is very scientific, but it requires the magic of it. Whereas just reading a bunch of studies is a little bit less magical.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  After the break, we try to capture the magic of being funny by going straight to the magicians.

• 12:20Speaker 00

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• 15:47Speaker 06

  That means the winner of Snatch Game is... Science. Yes, it's real.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Unexplainable, this is Manning Wen. So if none of the theories we talked about can fully explain what makes us laugh and knowing them doesn't make us any funnier, I started thinking that maybe humor just can't be broken down into a formula. But before I gave up, I wanted to check with a few comedians themselves.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Girl, Science, where have you been? Like, we've been just flailing around, screaming in the streets.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  This is Atsuko Akatsuka. She's a stand-up comedian.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  I think what makes something funny for me is when something's rooted in truth and there's a sincerity and something also unexpected to go with it. I like silly things. I like, because I like to misdirect in my stand-up. I have a joke about trying to help the environment so I stopped wearing panties.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  Dulce Sloan is a correspondent on The Daily Show, and she agrees. Surprise is pretty funny.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Knowing what to expect from something gives us a certain amount of security.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  Josh Johnson, also from The Daily Show.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  And I think that when you disrupt that security, it's why a lot of times horror and comedy come from the same places.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  But being funny might not be as simple as just being surprising or absurd or unexpected. Comedian Chris Fleming basically admits that he has no idea how he writes his jokes.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  The way that people have described my process is a fugue state. I'll write in like 5 to 10-minute bursts and my eyes will kind of go... They'll go soft, and I never remember the things that I write.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Ultimately, humor might be less of an abstract formula and more of a dynamic relationship with the audience.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  When people talk about the anatomy of comedy, we're always asked about writing jokes in our process. The audience is the other 50%.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  And there's certain audiences where you know, I have to go boom, boom. I have to... There's no deviation. I can't play with y'all. The body hasn't loosened. The mind hasn't loosened. They're listening, but they're not in case. It's like you're talking at them. And then there's other audiences where you can tell that they're fun and you can play with them. You can go somewhere wild and they'll come with you and they'll come right back and they'll go on this journey with you.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  More than setup and punchline, being funny might be about creating a space, an environment that allows humor to emerge.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  I think it's putting people at ease enough to laugh and letting them know that I'm here to have a good time with them. I'm not trying to trap them. We're all here to have fun is the most difficult thing because that's something that goes beyond words. Because you can say that and people still might not feel it. So you have to think about every aspect of your performance, your word choice, all that stuff that creates that environment for you.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  And some comedians make that environment by finding common ground.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  There's something comfortable about being familiar and then bringing a new idea when someone's already comfortable is when they're going to be the most receptive. And so it's the way that families can make each other laugh, within a family can make each other laugh in a way that other people can't. Because you have so much of a backstory with your family and so much shared history that there's something that happened that would take so much explaining and just so much background that it would kill whatever the joke is.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  And that's why I'm very physical in my comedy, too. Because growing up, I watched Lucille Ball, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, these people who didn't use words, but they were making me laugh as a Japanese kid, half-Japanese, half-Tahani kid who didn't speak English, but I could understand that.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Maybe the magic of comedy exists in a space between the audience and comedian, something that's made new every time.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  It can either make your brain so sharp if the audience is with you or it can make your brain so bad if they're not with you and you can be admitting the crimes you haven't committed if they're not with you. Or if they're with you, it's such a free fall.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Just in the history of the world, comedy has always been what has kept people going, brought people back. And yeah, I always tend to find the levity in things because that just adds for more life. And so that's why I keep running back to it. I'm only ever stuck in life and sadness and anxiety when I'm living in those emotions. The thing that gets me out is the need to laugh and to make other people laugh.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  This episode was produced by Meredith Hadnath and me, Manning Wen, with reporting from Ali Volpe. There was editing from Brian Resnick and Catherine Wells. We also had mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, fact-checking from Zoe Mullick, and music from Noam Hessenfeld.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  And special thanks this week to Jesse David Fox for philosophizing about humor with us. If you have any thoughts about this episode or ideas for the show, please email us. We're at [email protected]. We'd also love it if you left us a review or a rating. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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